My daughter’s end-of-term report confirms that she is being taught by alien reptiles

Tony Little, the headmaster of Eton, recently told me that he thought teacher training colleges tended to make people worse teachers rather than better. As the head of an independent school, Mr Little is allowed to appoint who he wants to his teaching staff, and regularly appoints those who have not been through the vacuous propaganda of the training colleges.

The same leeway is not afforded to the heads of state schools; their staff must have been subjected to a statutory period of brainwashing before they are allowed into the classrooms to teach our children all about Mary Seacole, the kindly black lady who helped out during the Crimean War. I met a lot of these state school teachers at the pensions march in London last week and understood immediately Mr Little’s reservations. They seemed an amenable and cheerful bunch, to be sure, but many also gave out the distinct impression that they had their brains sucked out of the top of their heads via a tube, by strange robotic alien lizard creatures from a distant and not terribly pleasant planet.